Any experience with control days? Beef Up Your Body Composition Wonder how these stack up against mini-cuts. Curiosity mainly.
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I think @danteism wrote Celtic Sea Salt way back in the day. But, having read the log I would say he’s using whatever is cheapest 
Edit: for what it’s worth, the point of including salt is sodium, so it can be a good idea to look up how much sodium is in the particular product you end up buying especially now when the marketing trend seems to be “sodium is bad for you, this product has less sodium, you should buy this instead of that”. I buy Maldon Sea Salt, it was one of the few brands that are available to me that I could find online the actual sodium content to the gram.
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At the moment I’m using non-iodine Himalayan salt and sea salt with iodine.
With salt there aren’t big differences apart from wether there is iodine or not, as all salts are around 99% sodium chloride. So raving about minerals isn’t something you should do.
Now I use both iodine and non-iodine salt because you don’t want to get too much of iodine, but you don’t want to eliminate it altogether either.
I don’t remember if I’ve used that, it may well be.
Yeah, definitely staying away from the most expensive brands, but I’m not using the absolutely cheapest either. With a bit of money you can get a much higher quality taste-wise, and that translates well to being able to consume more salt. (You know, if 2 grams in your intra makes you want to puke, 8 grams will be impossible)
I actually just started to use them a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t read the article before, it just came to my mind and I decided to test it out. So far I’ve liked them, although they haven’t been as radical as CT’s. (Yet, I plan on making them a bit harsher)
I’d use both minicuts and control days; both are good but I feel that they would compliment each other nicely. Control days for “localized” insulin sensitivity and restriction of fat gain, mini-cuts for overall insulin sensitivity and losing the little but of fat you may have gained.
No I know that they are virtually all the same, I was wondering if you were using actual table salt or other kind of salt.
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Jezuzz with 12kgs id be fried
Great stuff man!
I read this somewhere and I’ve always wondered: if you aren’t supersetting, how are you saving time? Is it just that you need less rest between sets because one muscle is resting while you do the exercise for its antagonist? Because if one were to rest between alternating sets as much as they would between straight set, to me it sounds like total time would be about the same.
How should I add volume with regards to volume per muscle? Should I increase sets for all body parts?
I’m currently deloading every fourth week. I’d never done structured deloads so I’m just testing out.
You know what, I wanted to ask specifically about this. I read the posts from DC that you shared some time ago, and he always places emphasis on doing cardio even when not cutting.
See, I never did any cardio and it so happens that I’m not very happy with my body fat level at the moment. If you take a look at my log I uploaded some very recent pics and you can see that I’m not particularly defined. I also appear to have a gut because of my posture (I’m starting to work on that), although from front pics it might not be immediately noticeable.
I do track calories but I think that in the past I might have over indulged quite a bit, apart from probably being genetically keen to put on fat easily. I wonder if there’s something I can do about it. DC seemed to believe that cardio can help keep body fat levels in check while bulking (I’m taking a read at the article about G Flux you posted–had already read it but it can’t hurt) and I want to try and bump up my caloric expenditure as well as consumption and see if favorable changes occur.
Do you believe in this? If so, what kind of applications are realistic and practical? Which kind of cardio would get the job done the best? This also ties in with my previous question about work capacity. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
Thank you!
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Let’s say you’re going to do three sets of OHP and pull ups with 2 minutes of complete rest between sets. (I won’t account for set duration as that doesn’t really change)
Option 1; traditional way
OHP set
2 minutes rest
OHP set
2 minutes rest
OHP set
2 minutes rest
Pull up set
2 minutes of rest
Pull up set
2 minutes rest
Pull up set
Total time: 10 minutes
Option 2; Alternating sets
OHP set
1 minute rest
Pull up set
1 minute rest
OHP set
1 minute rest
Pull up set
1 minute rest
OHP set
1 minute rest
Pull up set
Total time: 5 minutes
In both cases you are resting for 2 minutes between the sets of the same exercises. And that’s total rest, in the latter you’re actually getting a but more as doing a set for the antagonistic muscle groups helps with intra-workout recovery.
I’d increase sets of every bodypart. Now you don’t have to increase them in every session though; if you’re doing full body three times a week, increase sets of pressing in one session, pulls in other and legs in the third for example. If it feels like that’s not enough you can try increasing the sets of two areas every session; push and pull in one, legs and push in another and legs and pull in the third.
If that’s not enough just increase everything in every session.
If you wonder how you’ll know wether or not the volume increase was enough; your recovery from session to session shouldn’t take too big of a hit from week to week, but the week before a deload you should be pretty run down
That’s a good place to begin, once you get more familiar with deloading you can begin to do them by feel
Cardio/conditioning may help with keeping bodyfat down if you don’t eat more in surplus because of it. (As in, if you do 200 Calories worth of cardio and eat 500 Calories more it won’t work) If you eat about as much extra as you’ve burned the G-Flux effect could take place
I wouldn’t only do cardio though, I’d incorporate metabolic work, carries, HIIT and all that good stuff. Now you have to remember that all of those are pretty hard on your recovery ability, so don’t overdo them.
As per realistic applications; Stan Efferding talks about walking for ten minutes after each meal, that’s a good place to start. In addition to that, one metabolic session and one HIIT/Carry session a week could be a good place to start from
For types of cardio; use multiple. You won’t really use the treadmill four days a week for eternity, you’ll get bored and stop. (Or at least I would)
With all this we have to keep I’m mind that energy balance reigns supreme. If you’re doing a lot of conditioning work but you’re still gaining fat faster than you’d like you are eating too much. In that case, rather than increasing your conditioning even further, dial back the calories. A bit of conditioning is a good idea but there certainly is a point of diminishing returns.
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Got it, thanks. I had kinda thought it’d work like that.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. So since I’ll only be training for three weeks at a time, I guess the only way to get to the third week and be run down is by working very, very hard the weeks before. I used to suspect that I wasn’t training hard enough up until some months ago.
Now it’s been a while and I see that I’m pushing my workouts as hard as I can. In fact, I end up taking many of my sets to failure and for the last weeks I realized that I have been chasing the weight more than anything. I think that for the next training cycle I’ll focus on bringing up the quality of my reps and on improving my mind muscle connection. It’s not that I’ve been using sloppy form, I just got a bit too much caught up in the number on the dbs or machines.
I’m thinking of using a bodybuilding body part split to accomplish this, namely this one:
Thoughts?
That’s what I want to try and achieve.
I like your proposal of implementing one metabolic work and one hiit/carry session!
What could they consist of? Of course I’m not expecting you to write me a program, just a couple of tips.
For metabolic work, things like complexes? Maybe a treadmill walk paired with ab work or even just very high rep work for the muscles worked the day before?
As far as hiit, I train in a small gym and doing sprints could be an issue. I don’t really fancy going outside to train either. But I’d love to work on loaded carries, as I’ve only done them a few times.
Reading the G Flux article about athletes training hours every day had me fantasize about doing that too and eating a ton of food, but I realize that’s probably something only elite athletes with incredible genetics and professional tools and means for recovery can sustain… that’s also their job and they don’t have anything else stressful going on in their life either.
As always thank you for the insights! It’s always a pleasure to read a writeup of yours.
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With a structure like this you’ll want to up the intensity and workload very quickly. The first week shouldn’t be overkill, but it should be hard, second week should be pushing boundaries and third week should be straight from hell.
Personally I’d add one week of hard work in there.
I’m not a big fan of bro splits, 2 way or 3 way splits are what I prefer. (Either upper/lower or chest+back/legs/arms+delts)
If you continue with training three times a week go with a two-way split
I don’t know what equipment your gym has, but with bare minimum you can do:
Farmers walks
Waiters walks (DB held overhead)
Zercher carries (Barbell in the crooks of elbows)
Bear hug walks (Hugging a stack of plates)
Metabolic training is, in short, movements done at high speeds for a lot of reps in a circuit fashion, the movements can be done with bodyweight, bands or bars/dbs. You can also include stuff like box jumps, jump squats and clapping pushups. The movements you pick should be something you may not do in your everyday training.
As an example, Scott Abel’s quad blast:
All done with bodyweight. As you get more conditioned you may want to increase the amount of times you do this circuit.
25 Speed squats
12 lunges/leg
12 jumping lunges/leg
15 jump squats
You should be breathing hard and feeling like you are dying after you’ve done metabolic training, if you are not you probably didn’t do it hard enough.
See Scott Abel’s articles and videos on YouTube for more readily made circuits
Yeah, that’s not something most of us are able to do
Thanks man! Hopefully this helped
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I decided that I’ll do another 4 week training cycle (3 + 1 deload week like I mentioned) then I’ll get an 8 weeks of coaching by Paul Carter. I decided to do so because I trust him and I feel like I could learn something about programming my training that’ll benefit me long term better than just doing my thing.
So I’ll have another 4 weeks to do what I want before I start to do what I’m told by him. Do you think I’d be better off just sticking with the program I’ve been doing for the last months, so I can get better with those specific exercises?
In case you haven’t checked my log, here it is in summary:
Total body three days a week, same exercises every workout
- Seated Db ohp
- Back Squat
- Chin up
- Seated Cable Row
- Incline db press or chest press machine
- Biceps superset
- Shoulders superset
On Monday I do 5 sets for the back exercises and 3 for the rest. On Wednesday I do 5 sets for the presses and 3 for the rest. On Friday the squat gets five sets and the rest is done at 3 sets.
Reps also vary: I do sets of 6-8 on Monday and Friday for push movements, whereas on Wednesday the ohp gets 4 sets of 5 and a back off set of 15, and the bench press is done with a pyramid scheme. The back is worked at higher reps, mostly 8-10. I do chin ups weighted on Wednesday and bodyweight the other two days.
Do you like this approach? I learned it from Dan John.
I’d stick with it, I don’t see a reason to do four weeks of something different at this point
It’s not a bad way to train, in fact, if I was doing full body it would probably not be too far from that in terms of layout and exercise order.
It’s a good idea to vary the set/rep scheme between sessions, if you only ever did 5x5 you’d stall pretty quickly.
That’ll definitely benefit you long term. How much does it cost you?
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$ 500.
Well worth it in my opinion
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That’s actually less than I expected, coaches here tend to start around those numbers with no experience at all. Not that anyone in their right mind would pay them that, but that’s what they ask.
Yeah sure thing, he’s actually one of the cheapest around if you do a quick research. I’m thrilled for this and I’ll report back once the 8 weeks are over. I’m expecting good stuff to happen.
Meanwhile, I’ll have to suck it up and keep going despite not being happy with my bf level. I’d really like to do a cut but 4 weeks aren’t a lot and that’d make things complicated when I start training with him, let alone wasting some of the gains I made. It’s just hard for me to see that belly fat though. Guess I’ll have to make peace with that.
I’d actually prefer a client to come in a bit leaner, if you are uncomfortable with your bf% now you’ll need to restrict the eight weeks more calorie-wise and thus the gains in size will be limited. So unless you’re going to diet under his wing, consider doing a mini-cut now
That’s not a bad idea either. If you want to drop some thoughts about mini cuts and not losing muscle or even just point me to a previous post if you’ve already addressed this, I’d be infinitely grateful (then I promise I’ll leave you alone with the questions lol)
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It’ll be easier for me to give you a few guidelines here, as searching for a specific post would take like half an hour
- Calories 700-1000 under maintenance (for four weeks, 700-800 would be enough)
- High protein (think 2.5-3g per kg of bodyweight)
- Enough fat (40-50g will suffice)
- Carbs when needed. So post/intra workout and possibly before bed Keep the amount moderate, there’s probably no need to go over 120g on training days and 50-75g on rest days.
- Take fish oil with your last meal and eat a decent amount of vegetables
If your performance starts to drop up the carbs a bit around workouts.
No need to do that, I like answering questions and they keep my log active
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@danteism @samul The search feature in the forum is otherwise pretty dope, just search for “mini-cut” in this topic and you’ll find every mention of it and the particular post within seconds, not 30 minutes.
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Great! Should I drop the calories immediately or over the first two weeks? I’m estimating a maintenance of 3,300 kcal and am currently eating about 4,000. That’d mean dropping to 2,500 kcal or so.
Also: technically I have five weeks; the deload week that begins tomorrow and the four weeks of my next training cycle. How should I eat during this first week? I don’t know if it’s wise to drop the calories while also virtually not training. But eating 4,000 kcal and not training isn’t wise either considering the goal is fat loss here.
My guess: I could keep the calories at around 3,500 for the first half of the week to allow for recovery and then lower them as the week nears its end. What would you do if you were me?
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